According to Mr. Sala, only a few of the pictures in “Life in London” were the production of George Cruikshank. “We are not even quite certain,” he says, “as to whether the irresistibly ninth provoking group of ‘Dusty Bob and Black Sal’ can be claimed by him. Robert Cruikshank was the chief illustrator of Pierce Egan’s questionable _magnum opus_; and, oddly enough, until attention was drawn to George’s commanding talents by Professor Wilson and _Blackwood_, it was Robert or ‘Bob’ Cruikshank who was imagined, by a careless public, to be the genius of the family. His more gifted brother, nevertheless, was the sole illustrator in some forty admirable aquatint engravings of a kind of _pendant_ to ‘Life in London,’ called ‘Life Paris.’ The letterpress of this production was not furnished by Pierce Egan; nor could George at the end of his life remember by whom it was written, although the man’s name, he was wont to say, ‘was always on the tip of his tongue.’” George Cruikshank’s sketches of the Boulevards and the Palais Royal, elaborated from sketches furnished to him, were wonderfully spirited and true; albeit he had never been across the Channel Indeed, he never got beyond a French seaport in the course of his long life. A day at Boulogne comprehended all his continental experiences. His contemporary, Bryan Waller Procter, had never seen the ocean when he wrote “The Sea”; again, neither Schiller nor Rossini had seen Switzerland when they wrote their “William Tell.” Cuthbert Bede asserts that Cruikshank originated “Life in London,” and “was greatly displeased and distressed at the way in which the author wrote up to his designs.” In those days the Cruikshanks were not in a position to command Pierce Egan. It is clear that the designs illustrate the written work. It is quite true that George lamented the coarseness and the plan of it; but the plates have, throughout, his signature in conjunction with his brother’s.